Cage of Freedom

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Liner Notes

Cage of Freedom

Cage of Freedom started with a memory: being thirteen years old, building optical systems in my garage, while a school principal decided I couldn't learn; because I couldn't explain what Shakespeare was feeling.

The system had one shape for intelligence, and despite the fact that I could hold conversations with astronomers and optical physicists, I wasn't it. I didn't fit their assembly line, so I was rejected. That was the first cage. It took me thirty years to see how many others there were.

This is a song about the gap between what institutions say they're for and what they actually do. Banks that don't want you free, they want you in debt, because a debtor is a customer for life. Schools that measure what you can repeat, not what you can build. A healthcare system that profits from maintenance, not cure, because good health is a lost customer. A food supply run by profit, with no room left for your health. Media that needs your attention, not your understanding. Governments run by career politicians, who will always protect the career before the country.

The song's argument is simple, and it's in every verse: these systems aren't broken. They're working exactly as designed. They just weren't designed for people like me.

But underneath the argument is a quieter subject: what happens to the people who notice. The ones who see the wiring get renamed — difficult, antisocial, weird, different. Punished not for what they did, but for what they saw and couldn't be silent about.

The machine did everything it could to make me stop talking. Some of us it stops for good. It nearly stopped me. This song is proof it failed.

This song is for us.

— Light of the Moon, 2026.

A country run by bankers, forever in the red
They don't want you free, they want you in debt
A healthcare system owned by those who sell the cure
Will keep you sick and spending, that's what profit's for

Every system serves itself
Every promise serves its shelf
They built a throne and called it public good

They built the cage and called it freedom
Sold you the lock and called it freedom
The ones who see the wiring clear
Are the ones they taught to fear
Left standing at the fence to watch the wheels go round

A nation run by wartime will never find its peace
A people fed by media will never find release
A food chain run by profit has no room for your health
An education built on tests can't cultivate yourself

Every system serves itself
Every promise serves its shelf
They built a throne and called it public good

They built the cage and called it freedom
Sold you the lock and called it freedom
The ones who see the wiring clear
Are the ones they taught to fear
Left standing at the fence to watch the wheels go round

They said I couldn't learn
I didn't need their indoctrination
They said I didn't qualify
I didn't need their validation
They standardized the children
Who didn't fit the frame
And called their cruelty policy
And called their damage sane

They built the cage and called it freedom
Sold you the lock and called it freedom
But the ones outside the wiring
Are the ones worth admiring
Still standing at the fence
Watching the wheels go round

And a government run by lifelong politicians
Will never, ever, embrace real reform
That's just the way they built the door